Running the campaign

How twenty million gardens actually happened

1. 01

   Tell the expert to get out of the way

   Still holds

   The county agent should avoid being placed in a position of responsibility. A properly organized program will relieve rather than add to the demands upon his time. His experience in organization and his subject matter information can be most helpful as an adviser to the Victory Garden committee.

   Two sentences containing the whole extension model, and the reason a federal staff of a few thousand could stand behind twenty million gardens. The agent is not the service; the agent builds the thing that is the service, and then advises it. Any programme in which the expert becomes the responsible party is capped at whatever that person can personally do, and collapses when they leave. It is also, quietly, the most transferable idea in this archive — it is not about gardens at all.

2. 02

   Find the amateurs who are already keen

   Still holds

   Usually, there are many local amateur gardeners who will welcome an opportunity to serve their community and their country by organizing and later by supervising a Victory Garden program.

   The recruitment instruction that goes with the one above, and it is right about where the energy comes from. Every community garden story in this archive — Avalon Park on the old city dump, Mrs Ott's twenty-five acres in Portage Park — is an experienced amateur who wanted the job, found by somebody who was looking. The programme's role was to notice them and give them a committee, which is a far cheaper intervention than providing the expertise itself.

3. 03

   The agenda as a list of unsolved problems

   Of its time

   5. How can our victory gardeners make their gardens produce more? 6. The need for more community gardens. 7. Problems of the urban gardener. 8. How may we improve our farm gardens?

   Read as a document it is a hotel booking; read as a list it is the campaign's own account of what it had not solved going into its biggest year. Yield, access to land, the specific difficulty of gardening in a city, and — item eight, quietly — the fact that farm gardens were often worse than town ones, which is counterintuitive and appears nowhere else in this archive. Three meetings in three hotels in one week across the southern states, with the seed trade, the press and the radio services all invited.

4. 04

   More than a patriotic hobby

   Of its time

   Victory gardening is more than a patriotic hobby; it is a wartime necessity and a vital part of our food program. We should not forget that food is still a vital war weapon, and a powerful peace force... To support offensive military action on the global scale that our forces are fighting takes more food just as it takes more ammunition.

   The Secretary of Agriculture, six minutes and twenty-five seconds, recorded onto a disc in Washington and posted to stations to play whenever they had the space. The distribution method is half the interest: this is broadcasting before tape, where a national voice reached a local audience as a physical object in the post. The argument itself is the campaign's standard one, and the sentence about demobilised soldiers continuing to eat is a rare moment of the programme thinking past the war it was justified by.

5. 05

   Ten points from a hundred and fifty leaders

   Of its time

   In fact some people, including a friend of mine who's here today, started making plans for a garden program as far back as November, when 150 garden leaders got together in Washington, D. C. ... they all recommended a vigorous campaign for Victory gardens in 1945.

   Worth setting beside the printed 1945 programme document, which this disc is the broadcast version of — the same ten points, delivered as two men talking. The interesting detail is the date it was recorded: 22 December, for a season starting in February, which is the lead time a national campaign actually needed. And the November meeting of a hundred and fifty leaders is where the recommendation came from, so the printed programme was ratifying a decision rather than making one.

6. 06

   A fortnight after Germany surrendered

   Of its time

   The requirements of our armed forces will not be lessened much by the defeat of Germany. The need of food by the people of some European countries is greater than some of us had expected. Meanwhile, in this country, planting has been delayed and growing conditions have been poor in many large areas. Continued cold weather and rain have made it impossible for many people to plant, or to re-plant gardens injured by frost. In spite of the difficulties, it would be a most serious mistake to give up the garden now.

   The most human document in the archive, and the only one that sounds worried. V-E Day was a fortnight earlier, so the reason everyone had been given for gardening had just partly evaporated; the weather had been bad enough that gardens were frosted and not replanted; and a federal committee is writing to its own organisers to ask them not to let it fall apart. Every clause is a real difficulty stated plainly rather than argued away, which is unusual here. Ten months later the campaign found its last argument in the world famine, and this is what the gap between them looked like.

7. 07

   The campaign was a press operation

   Of its time

   Contents of this kit: 1. Introduction… 2. List of Suggested Appeals… 4. Quotable Quotes… 8. Suggested Window Displays… 10. Radio Suggestions… 11. Sample Radio Scripts… 13. List of Available Motion Pictures… 16. A Harvest Show Suggestion… 20. 10 Suggested Ads… 21. Suggestion for a Weekly Column… 22. Proof of Mat of Symbols, Available Free… 23. Material Sent to Papers by Meyer Both… 24. Materials Sent to Papers by Metro.

   The table of contents is the document. Everything else in this archive is the campaign's output — a broadcast, a leaflet, an answer to a listener — and this is the apparatus that produced it, posted to local organisers so a county in Ohio could run a media campaign out of a box. Ready-written advertisements, a weekly newspaper column, free printing plates for the campaign's symbols, window displays for shops, films and slide films to borrow, and material syndicated to newspapers through two commercial press services. Twenty million gardens did not happen because people read a bulletin. They happened because somebody mailed this to every state.

8. 08

   Forty percent, corroborated

   Of its time

   War Food Administrator Marvin Jones said: “Food is just as necessary as guns, tanks and planes. Home gardeners produced over 40 percent of the fresh vegetables this year and we are asking them to equal this record in 1945.”

   The campaign's largest claim, appearing here in a second place and attributed to a named official — the 1944 programme document makes the same assertion, and this kit is where organisers were handed it as a quotable quote. Two appearances is not verification; both trace to the same body and neither publishes a method. It is worth keeping the figure and the qualifier together: over forty percent of *fresh* vegetables, in a year when a great deal of commercial production was canned and sent overseas, which is a much narrower claim than forty percent of what Americans ate.

9. 09

   Two duties, and a number

   Of its time

   The duty of the American family in this emergency is to: 1. Cut food waste and eat less wheat products, fats, and oils — substituting foods that are plentiful. 2. Produce and preserve food at home... Last year's 18,400,000 home gardens turned out tremendous quantities of vegetables and fruits. We must do as well this year — better if possible.

   The last policy statement in the archive, and the mechanism is specific rather than rhetorical: wheat, fats and oils were what the United States could ship, so eating vegetables at home meant eating less of the exportable commodity. The figure is the one to keep — 18.4 million gardens in 1945, against the twenty million claimed for 1943 and the twenty-two million asked for in 1944. The campaign's own numbers show it declining a year before it ended, which no broadcast in this archive ever says out loud.

All 7 documents

In order, each linked to its scan. Every one of them is quoted above.

• “Suggestions for Organizing… in Urban Areas”, 1943Quoted

  Four pages telling county agents how to start a city garden programme, and — more usefully — how to avoid ending up running it.

• “1944 Regional Victory Garden Conferences”Quoted

  A conference circular: three southern meetings in three hotels in one week, and a ten-point agenda that reads as a list of the campaign's unsolved problems.

• “A Victory Garden Program for 1945”, recorded December 22Quoted

  A transcription disc: Ernie Moore and H. W. Hochbaum presenting the ten-point 1945 programme agreed by 150 garden leaders in Washington that November.

• “Victory Gardens in 1945”, transcription discQuoted

  Six minutes twenty-five seconds of Secretary Wickard, recorded for stations to play, on why gardens were still a wartime necessity rather than a patriotic hobby.

• May 23, 1945Quoted

  Issued a fortnight after Germany surrendered, into a cold wet spring, asking organisers not to let the campaign collapse. The most human document in the group.

• “Garden and Conserve to Save What We've Won”, 1946Quoted

  The final policy statement: an international food crisis “far worse than was indicated three months ago”, and two duties assigned to every American family.

• “1945 Victory Gardens: A Government Information Kit”Quoted

  Sixty-four pages: suggested appeals, quotable quotes, window displays, sample radio scripts, ten ready-made advertisements, a weekly newspaper column, free ad mats, and material syndicated to papers. The largest document in the archive and the least like gardening advice.